


a life of service

by towokuwusatsuwu



Series: Femslash February 2018: Tokusatsu Edition [9]
Category: Kamen Rider Gaim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Medieval, F/F, Pre-Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 03:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13627278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towokuwusatsuwu/pseuds/towokuwusatsuwu
Summary: Looking at a lifetime of imprisonment or a death at an execution's hand, Touka chooses to risk the wrath of the gods to die on her own terms instead. Yoko has never had a human companion before.





	a life of service

The forest is massive, a large organic creature that senses the moment Akatsuki Touka steps through one of the few entrances between the trees. The claustrophobic feeling settles in quickly, feeling surrounded on all sides, and when she looks behind her, the entrance is gone, nothing but tree trunks and vines. No way to escape now that she’s come inside.

Not that she has any intention of going back, not now. There is nothing left for her back there; her village had been destroyed, her family killed, and everything she fought so hard for had been taken from her. The only satisfaction she had gained was that she had snuck into the house of the lord who had ordered her village destroyed and cut his throat with her own knife. Even now, the bloodstains are visible on her dark clothing, staining dark gray to pure black. She had been running from his men, and the forest was the safest destination.

No one who entered ever returned, after all.

Touka tears a strip of cloth from her robe, pulling it taught between her hands to test its durability before using it to tie her hair back out of her face. No human had ever returned from this forest, and the humans who had entered it without being called by one of the gods were rumored to perish in the foliage. Others spoke of the vengeful god Baron who claimed the lives of humans who came here, or the dark dragon god Ryugen; Touka pays none of it any mind.

She has been a warrior every day of her life, even before she joined the army to fight for some semblance of peace, and the thought of being imprisoned and dying behind bars for a crime she absolutely had to commit doesn’t sit well with her. Better to die here, on her own terms, than to find herself at the mercy of some dungeon master. This is a fate she can face calmly.

The roots of the trees are thick enough that they threaten to trip her with every step, so she is careful as she searches out a path beaten into the earth. Very few humans have come here to her knowledge, so it hardly surprises her when the path she eventually finds is still uneven and covered with vines and grass instead of bare earth. It will have to do. She has no other options, and she hardly doubts the gods will be merciful to her for entering their holy forest.

When she had been a child growing up with her mother and sisters, she had fallen into worship of the goddess of nature and fertility and the life cycle, the goddess Marika who went about in rose-pink robes and whose symbol was the peach. Touka closes her eyes and sends her a prayer, an apology for entering her home without permission, with no excuses given. She has no reason to ask for mercy. After all, she came here to spend her last breath.

Her pack has enough food and water to last her for days, but even she knows that once her rations run out, there will be no animals here to hunt, no fruit that is not poisonous to humans, and no water that would not turn her blood sour and cold. The stories may be only stories, of course, but the gods had always been a faithful and true part of her life and if they had long ago decided that no one was to enter their forest without permission, without being called to their side, then she believed it. There is no reason for her to doubt the validity of this truth.

She has enough food and water to last her for maybe a week if she’s careful, but then she will have to face whatever fate is waiting for her. She thinks she can live with this.

* * *

The forest is as beautiful as it is deadly, or so Touka decides when she wakes on her third morning there to the sunlight rich and green in the air above her, filtering through the many leaves above her head. There had been sounds in the night, the heavy beat of drums like her own heart against her ribs, but she had not sought out the sound. There had been no stories about drum beats, no one left to bring them to the rest of the world, and so she does not pursue the sound for fear of what it might lead her toward.

She rises from her makeshift bed— thicker grass and leaves beneath a tree that offered her sufficient coverage from the elements— and rubs the sleep from her eyes. There is a sweeter scent in the air than she is used to, and when she looks around her, she pauses. A familiar fruit hangs from a nearby branch, by its lonesome, and the shape and size of the tree does not reflect the soft fuzzy peach that hangs there. Something in her tempts her to take it.

There had been no fruit here that she recognized as being safe to consume, and so she had never eaten any of it. There are thick and round fruits the color of fresh bruises here and there, but the sight of them had filled her with more apprehension than anything else. Surely nothing like this would be safe for a human to consume, and she had had more than her fair share of brushes with death. But this peach seems perfectly harmless in comparison.

Touka plucks the peach from the branch, stroking her thumb over the soft velvety surface. She might be delusional from being in this forest, but it feels almost as though it was placed in such a way that she would find it. Of course, it’s a ridiculous thought, and she had come here without the blessing of a god so they would be quicker to punish her than to reward her.

Still, Touka bites into the peach and closes her eyes, feeling the flesh give way beneath her teeth and the rush of juice between her lips. Fully ripe, so ripe that another day would have made it too sweet, too much for anyone to handle. Here, in the center of this enchanted forest, or perhaps not the center since the stories said the dwelling of the gods was in the center and protected by who knew how much forest on every side. She can believe that. Three days of walking with little sleep and rest had shown her nothing habitable, not a single structure save for the trees that grew close enough together for her to use as shade or protection.

Above her, the heavens rumble, and it takes her a moment to realize the sunlight has gone.

“A storm,” she murmurs, shaking her head. This deep into the forest, the sky is all but invisible and she should have known that she would not be able to tell when the clear blue gave way to turbulent gray with no way to see it for herself. “Is this your way of punishing me for entering your forest? A storm when I have no protection? So be it. I brought down this punishment.”

_ You knew what you would reap when you crossed a line that was not yours to cross. _

She could always wait to travel, but instead, she draws the hood of her robe up over her head to protect her from the rainfall and starts onward. There is no reason to wait out the storm; her inevitable death will approach as it pleases and there is nothing she can do to slow that pace, but she will not peacefully wait for it either. Had she come all the way to this forest just to let a little rain slow her down? No. Touka has never been that kind of person, after all.

_ Why do you come here when you know you will die, mortal? _

The voice makes her still and Touka turns around, scanning the trees around her for the source of the voice even though it seems unnaturally close, almost like someone spoke it into her ear.

The forest must be getting to her. Touka takes another bite from the peach in her hand and walks forward once more, telling herself to remain calm, to not let her mind slip away from her. If the gods will witness her downfall in this forest, they will witness her being wholly herself until the very end is upon her; she will not let madness drive her, nor will she let the lack of reason grip her heart until there is nothing left but fear. No animals inhabit this forest; there are no predators to attack her or track her until she is too weak to fight back, and so she has nothing to fear except death. Every human is bound to die. She knows this as well as anyone else; she knows that life can be easily stolen on the whim of those who are too protected to know what life could possibly mean. Why be afraid of what she knows everyone will suffer one day?

Her father, her mother, her sisters… The thought of everything she has lost still weighs heavy on her heart, but not as heavy as it did before. Though she had been unable to save them, she had found her vengeance and some measure of peace that at least the man who ordered the slaughter of hundreds would no longer rest easy for his crimes. It might not have been fair for her to take a life like this, but she is not willing to blame herself too heavily.

When she strips the peach down to the pit, she squeezes it once in the palm of her hand before tucking it into the folds of her robe. She does not know where it came from, but anything that symbolizes the goddess Marika, the beautiful figure that her mother had so revered, is a blessing that is not meant to be squandered. Touka will not spit upon her blessings or her gifts now. She entered her forest, but she will not pay her further insult.

* * *

The crystal sphere resting in the observatory room reflects the scene of the young woman walking through the forest clearly; Minato Yoko stares down at it, one hand folded over her mouth, the other wrapped around her middle. Though the others had long since lost interest with the human who fearlessly dared to enter their forest while seeking nothing for herself, Yoko has not been able to shake the knowledge of her existence here. When the woman had plucked the peach Yoko had set within her sights, she had even dared a bit of a smile.

The sound of footsteps draws her attention away from the globe; Takatora raises a hand in greeting and Yoko nods to show she has seen him before turning her eyes back to the woman. The globe can gaze to any corner of the earth and has been a source of information and amusement over the years they have been here, but Yoko has never found herself so intrigued by a single human before. Most of them are interchangeable, coming and going, living and dying while she and her fellow deities live on and on into the coming centuries.

“You’re still watching her,” Takatora says before he’s close enough to see this for himself.

“She really is very interesting. I don’t think we’ve had a human come into the forest before who didn’t want something for one of us or just to prove that we don’t really exist.” Yoko smoothes the folds of her voluminous rose pink robes just to have something to do with her hands. “I’ve been picking through her memories out of curiosity, and it seems she came here because her family was killed and she killed the lord who ordered her village destroyed.”

Takatora smirks at her and taps the side of his head, and Yoko sighs. Of course, he would have known about that. War and battle are the possession of Zangetsu Shin, after all. “I’m not surprised. So she chose to come here instead of being arrested. Not the worst choice.”

“Do you think she was wrong for the way she chose to do things?” Yoko asks.

“I don’t. I would have likely done the same in her shoes, though without the skill as a human to pull it off the way she did.” Takatora finally comes to stand beside her, peering down at the globe, serious eyes growing even more solemn. “Do you want to keep her at your side, then?”

Yoko tips her head to the side at that question. “I don’t know. It’s an interesting thought.”

It had been tradition that the gods would choose mortals to remain with them for any length of time, though Yoko had never seen a human she thought special enough or worthy enough to stand beside her instead of serving at her feet. Cruel? Perhaps, but it was the truth.

Akatsuki Touka had drawn her interest because though humans often came into their forest without permission, most of them were nothing special. Only Kaito had ever seen anything special in any of them, and from her understanding of the way he ran his temple, Kaito kept those humans as servants and worshippers and nothing more, and even he had a careful list of guidelines before he chose any humans to live. Those he deemed more dangerous, he simply killed himself, a precaution that had been granted to the god of chaos as his own special power.

He had not chosen to kill Touka, nor had he chosen to take her in as one of his own, but Yoko had felt his interest in her ripple across the wave of communication that linked all of them together. He had wanted them to know about her, perhaps to let them decide for themselves what they thought of her, which is rare enough for him. Housed so far away from the rest of them, Kaito rarely if ever interacts with them directly except when Mai draws them all together to speak. He keeps to himself, except this time he had chosen to break his own tradition.

“It’s up to you, what you decide to do about it. You’re the only one of us who have been interested in her for an extended period of time.” Takatora rolls his shoulders in an easy shrug, and Yoko raises an eyebrow at him. He had just come in to ask about her, had he not? “It might do you good to have a companion finally. You’d been alone since before I came here, and that was centuries ago.”

“You sound like you’re worried about me, Takatora. I assure you that I’ve been doing with my life as a goddess exactly what I feel I need to do with it.” Yoko turns her eyes back to Touka, to her strong and confident walk forward, the strength these motions bely. “But noted. I will think about it. You may take your leave now, if that is all you had to say to me.”

Takatora tips her a smile but takes his leave, and Yoko turns her eyes back to the crystal.

It may be time to make an appearance.

* * *

On the fifth day, when her food stores are running low, Touka’s sleep is interrupted by a flash of light so bright it threatens to blind her; she raises an arm to shield her eyes, only lowering in when the light seems to be gone. It takes her a moment to really accept the sight before her, the woman in her elegant pink robes, her short hair gleaming despite the lack of light this late in the evening. Her entire body gives off a faint rosy glow that colors the air immediately around her and Touka takes a deep breath, awed, before scrambling to her knees.

She fixes her gaze on the ground, not worthy of meeting Marika’s eyes, but she can still hear the soft footsteps as Marika walks toward her. “Akatsuki Touka, you come into my forest without permission, a crime usually punishable by death. You come here because you took vengeance on the man responsible for the death of your family, to die here by your own terms instead of rotting behind bars for the remainder of your life or to die by an executioner’s axe.”

“Yes, goddess,” Touka breathes; her hands tremble just slightly in the grass and she can feel the weight of Marika’s power weighing down on her back.

Marika stops just before her, her bare feet untouched by the earth she stands upon. “It is our tradition to take human companions of those we feel the most worthy, to call them into our forest. You would be surprised to learn, I am sure, that there is evil in this world that threatens even us in our immense power and strength. We, too, need protection against what the darkness hides. If I offered you a place by my side as my guardian, would you take it?”

It takes Touka a few minutes to gather herself enough to process this request; she dares to raise her eyes higher, to the voluminous skirts that hang from Marika’s hips, spilling around her in soft folds. “I-I have done nothing to earn your blessing or favor but if you have deemed me worthy to stand by your side, then I will do so, and proudly and faithfully.”

“You intrigue me. A mortal willing to die on her own terms in our dangerous forest. I am also aware you found my gift.” The smile is clear in her voice and Touka dares to look up at her face as she recalls the peach she found two days ago. “Yes, that gift. I have been watching you. You were skilled as a warrior and as an assassin. I need only the most skilled to protect me.”

She extends one hand and Touka takes it in both of hers, pressing a reverent kiss to the back of her hand, over her knuckles, her skin soft and free of any blemish, somehow warm even though the forest is cool in the night. Marika smiles down at her, her other hand resting on top of Touka’s head, pushing her hood back and off before Marika combs her fingers through Touka’s hair.

“You will be my guardian, then. Rise and receive my blessing.” Marika takes a step back as Touka rises unsteadily to her feet, then steps directly into her personal space, her hands light and soft on Touka’s cheeks as she frames Touka’s face with her hands. “Akatsuki Touka, welcome to the service of the goddess Marika.”

Marika kisses her on the mouth, slow and lingering, and Touka feels the fatigue and soreness in her muscles fade away as she stands there, unmoving, in shock. She finds her strength a moment later, gathering Marika in her arms and holding her close and tight, her goddess to guard and protect, the one who granted her mercy when she did not deserve it.

“You will come back to the castle with me now, to remain at my side for the years to come.” Marika smiles up at her and Touka smiles back. “You will protect me and guard me with your life, and in exchange you will stay with me, living long past when your human life would end.”

Touka nods quickly, her voice trembling. “I will do as you command, my goddess.”

She did nothing to deserve this blessing, but she will keep her word.


End file.
